Former WCW Manager Sonny Onoo Reveals That Major Star Almost Debuted Wearing Mask

The 1990s were a boom period for professional wrestling, with an unbelievable number of future legends making their debuts during the decade. One of those debuts was Paul Wight in WCW, who would later become known as The Big Show in WWE. During a recent AdFreeShows appearance from former WCW manager Sunny Onoo, it was revealed that Wight almost had a wildly different look upon his debut.

"I found Andre the Giant's mask, which I didn't realize I had," Onoo said. "That mask, ... we were gonna use it for Paul Wight, when Paul Wight was coming in. The storyline we were gonna use was [to] put that mask on Paul Wight, and make his first appearance in WCW, and of course everybody from Hulk [Hogan] and everybody else would freak out."

At the time of Wight's WCW debut, Andre the Giant had been dead for around two years. Understandably, some in WCW thought that the storyline might wind up confusing the audience, and it was dropped shortly before he made his debut. Instead, the decision was made to bill Wight as Andre's son, which is arguably not much better than the initial idea. As pointed out by Onoo, that storyline didn't last long either, possibly due to legal issues between WCW and WWE.

Wight himself recently spoke about his brief time as the kayfabe son of Andre the Giant, with the former WWE Champion stating that, in that era, it was believed that wrestlers had to have some legacy factor to immediately endear them to audiences, and Wight was far from the only wrestlers to be assigned a fictional relationship to an existing performer. According to former WCW Eric Bischoff, it was Hulk Hogan who first discovered Wight and came up with the idea for his fake connection to Andre.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit AdFreeShows with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.